Mint

Wildly easy, wildly vigorous, and the one herb you must contain: grow mint in a pot or a barrier-ringed bed, keep it moist, and it hands you sprigs for tea, drinks, and cooking for years.

Start from a transplant, cutting, or division (skip seed) in rich, moist soil and part sun - and above all, plant it CONTAINED in a pot or barrier.

Start mint from a transplant, a rooted cutting, or a division - it roots so easily that seed is pointless, and named types (especially peppermint, a sterile hybrid) won't come true from seed anyway. Give it rich, consistently moist soil and full sun to part shade; unlike Mediterranean herbs, mint wants moisture, not lean dry ground.

The one decision that matters most is how you contain it. The best options: grow it in a pot (on its own, so it can't creep into other pots); sink a bottomless bucket or large nursery pot into the ground, rim above soil level, and plant into that; or ring a dedicated bed with a solid barrier - metal flashing or thick plastic - buried 12-18 inches deep with a few inches standing proud to stop surface runners. Even then, mint will try to escape over the rim, so plan to patrol the edges. Whatever you do, do not simply plant mint in an open bed.

Keep it moist, harvest and shear often, patrol for escaping runners, and divide every few years - the ongoing job is containment as much as care.

Mint asks for little beyond water and vigilance. Keep it moist - potted mint especially dries out fast and wilts - and harvest or shear it often, which keeps the plant bushy, tender, and flavorful and stops it from flowering. A hard mid-season shear brings a fresh flush of young leaves.

The real ongoing work is containment. Every few weeks through the growing season, walk the perimeter and cut off any rhizomes or runners that have breached the pot or barrier or crept over the rim - a single missed runner reseeds the invasion. Every three or four years, lift and divide the plant (or just restart from a rooted runner) because old mint gets woody and thin at the center. In cold zones it dies back and overwinters underground with no help; sink pots or shelter them so they don't freeze dry.

Snip sprigs whenever you want from spring to fall; cut above a leaf pair, take up to a third at a time, and shear the whole plant back to reset it.

Harvest mint by snipping 4-6 inch stem tips above a leaf pair - and harvest generously, because cutting is exactly what mint wants: it branches, thickens, and stays tender, and frequent picking delays the flowering that turns leaves tougher and less sweet. Take up to a third of the plant at a time and it bounces back within days.

For the best flavor, cut in the morning after the dew dries, when the oils are highest, and cut just before the plant blooms if you're harvesting a batch to dry. When the plant gets leggy or begins to flower, shear the whole thing back hard - it rewards you with a clean flush of fresh young growth. From spring through fall a single healthy plant produces far more mint than most households can use.

Best fresh, but dries and freezes well; refrigerate sprigs in water or a damp towel, dry for tea, or freeze leaves in ice cubes.

Mint is at its best fresh, but it stores several ways. In the fridge, stand cut sprigs in a glass of water like flowers, or wrap them in a barely-damp paper towel in a bag - either keeps them a week or more. For the longer term, mint dries well for tea: bundle stems and hang them in a warm, dry, airy, shaded spot until crisp, then strip and store the leaves whole.

Mint also freezes nicely - chop leaves into ice-cube trays with a little water and freeze for drinks and cooking, or freeze whole sprigs in a bag. And because a mint plant is so productive and semi-evergreen in mild zones, the simplest approach is often to grow more than enough and harvest fresh as you need it, drying only the surplus for winter tea.

The easiest plant to multiply in the garden: any runner or stem roots in water in a week, so one plant becomes a lifetime supply for free.

Mint is the poster child for easy propagation, and that vigor is exactly why it spreads. Three foolproof routes: runners - lift a rooted surface runner or rhizome, cut it free, and pot it up (it's already a plant); cuttings - stand a 4-6 inch stem tip in a glass of water and it grows roots within a week or two, ready to plant; and division - split a clump in spring, which you'd do anyway to rejuvenate it.

Because mint roots so willingly, you never need to buy it twice, and you can turn one good plant into as many pots as you want - or share it endlessly. Skip seed: it's slow, variable, and peppermint is a sterile hybrid that doesn't produce viable seed at all, so the plant you like is only ever reproduced true from a cutting or runner. The same trick works on a grocery-store bunch: root a sprig from the produce aisle and you've started your patch.

Eaten in small amounts but rich in aromatic oils (menthol) and antioxidants; mostly a flavorful, soothing addition rather than a dietary staple.

Mint is used in seasoning and tea amounts, so it's not a dietary staple by volume - but the leaf is rich in aromatic menthol and menthone (peppermint) or carvone (spearmint) and in antioxidant polyphenols like rosmarinic acid. Fresh mint supplies small amounts of vitamin A and manganese, and a genuinely useful amount of flavor and aroma for almost no calories.

Its more practical health role is in the kitchen and teapot: mint tea is a caffeine-free, soothing drink, and fresh mint makes water, fruit, and vegetables more appealing. The concentrated benefits (see Medicine) belong mostly to peppermint oil rather than the leaf you eat, but as a flavorful, refreshing herb, mint earns its place in any garden and diet.

The bright, cooling herb of both sweet and savory: tea and mojitos, lamb and yogurt sauces, tabbouleh and peas, chocolate and fruit - match the mint to the job.

Mint is one of the few herbs equally at home in sweet and savory cooking, and its cool brightness lifts almost anything. Savory: it's classic with lamb, essential to Middle Eastern tabbouleh and yogurt sauces (tzatziki, raita) and Vietnamese and Thai dishes, and lovely with peas, new potatoes, and cucumber. Sweet and drinks: mint tea, mojitos and juleps, fruit salads, chocolate, and ice cream.

Match the type to the use: spearmint is the all-purpose culinary and cooking mint (sweeter, milder, the one for tabbouleh, lamb, and most savory dishes); peppermint is stronger and more menthol-forward, best for tea, chocolate, and desserts; and specialty types like chocolate, apple, and mojito mint add their own twists to drinks and garnishes. Add fresh mint late or raw - heat dulls its brightness - and always tear or chop just before using.

A real medicinal tradition with modern evidence - notably peppermint oil for IBS and digestion, and topically for tension headache - though the concentrated oil is a thing apart from the leaf.

Mint - especially peppermint - has one of the better-founded medicinal records among culinary herbs, going back to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian use of mint for digestive complaints. The standout modern evidence is for peppermint oil and irritable bowel syndrome: multiple controlled trials and reviews find enteric-coated peppermint-oil capsules improve overall IBS symptoms and abdominal pain versus placebo, working by relaxing the smooth muscle of the gut. Peppermint oil applied topically to the temples also has limited evidence for easing tension headaches, and mint tea is a traditional, gentle settler for an upset stomach and nausea.

The honest distinctions matter. Most of the strong evidence is for concentrated peppermint oil, not the leaf you cook with or a cup of tea - though the tea's soothing digestive role is real and safe. Peppermint oil can worsen reflux/heartburn in some people by relaxing the esophageal sphincter, and menthol should never be applied to or inhaled near the face of infants and small children. As a food and tea, mint is safe and pleasant; the concentrated oil is a genuine remedy that deserves respect and, for medicinal use, informed dosing.

Named for a nymph of Greek myth, prized as a strewing herb and digestive from antiquity, and now grown around the world - with peppermint a relative newcomer bred in 1700s England.

Mint reaches back to the start of the written record. Greek myth gives it its name: Minthe, a nymph transformed into the fragrant plant. Ancient Greeks and Romans rubbed mint on tables and floors as a strewing herb for its scent, crowned themselves with it at feasts, and used it as a digestive - and mint appears among the herbs of the Bible and ancient Egyptian medicine alike. Spearmint is the old, widespread species of this long history.

Peppermint, by contrast, is a relative newcomer: a natural hybrid of spearmint and watermint first recognized and cultivated in England in the 1700s, and later grown at scale (famously in Mitcham, and then across the American Midwest) for its menthol-rich oil. From those roots mint spread into kitchens, teapots, medicine cabinets, candy, and toothpaste worldwide - and, thanks to its unstoppable rhizomes, into a good many gardens it was never invited to.

Very cold-hardy (to about zone 3) and grown almost everywhere; heat and dryness are harder on it than cold, and containment is essential in every climate.

Mint is one of the most climate-tolerant herbs there is - and containment matters in every one of those climates. Zones 3-5: extremely hardy; the top dies back and the rhizomes overwinter underground with no protection, resprouting vigorously in spring. Zones 6-8: an easy, near-evergreen-to-semi-evergreen perennial; give it moisture and some afternoon shade in hot summers. Zones 9-11: heat and drought, not cold, are the challenge - plant in fall, site it in part shade with steady moisture, and it can grow year-round; a mulched, well-watered pot handles the heat best. Everywhere, the constant is the same: rich moist soil, some shade in heat, and - always - a container or buried barrier, because mint's spreading habit is undiminished by climate.

Taking over the garden means it wasn't contained; wilting is dryness; orange leaf pustules are mint rust; leggy woody centers need dividing and shearing.

Spreading everywhere and swamping other plants: the classic mint mistake - it was planted loose instead of contained; dig it out, replant into a pot or barrier, and stay after escaping runners (this is the number-one mint problem). Wilting and crisping: mint wants moisture, so this is usually dryness, especially in pots or full sun - water more and give afternoon shade in heat. Orange or rusty pustules on leaf undersides, with distorted shoots: mint rust, a fungal disease; remove affected growth, improve airflow, avoid overhead watering, and cut a badly infected plant to the ground (rust overwinters in the rhizomes, so heavily infected plants are best replaced from clean stock). Leggy, woody, sparse in the center: an aging plant - shear it back and divide it in spring to rejuvenate. Loss of flavor and tenderness: the plant has flowered - shear it back hard for a fresh flush.